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Raumfahrt - JUNO SPACECRAFT-Jupiter-Mission Update-11

9.10.2017

Juno Observes Jupiter, Io and Europa

This color-enhanced image of Jupiter and two of its largest moons – Io and Europa – was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft as it performed its eighth flyby of the gas giant planet.

The image was taken on Sept. 1, 2017 at 3:14 p.m. PDT (6:14 p.m. EDT). At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 17,098 miles (27,516 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a latitude of minus 49.372 degrees.

Closer to the planet, the Galilean moon of Io can be seen at an altitude of 298,880 miles (481,000 kilometers) and at a spatial scale of 201 miles (324 kilometers) per pixel. In the distance (to the left), another one of Jupiter's Galilean moons, Europa, is visible at an altitude of 453,601 miles (730,000 kilometers) and at a spatial scale of 305 miles (492 kilometers) per pixel.

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Citizen scientist Roman Tkachenko processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager.

Quelle: NASA

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Update: 31.10.2017

Jupiter’s X-ray auroras pulse independently

Jupiter’s intense northern and southern lights pulse independently of each other according to new UCL-led research using ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatories.

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The study, published today in Nature Astronomy, found that very high-energy X-ray emissions at Jupiter’s south pole consistently pulse every 11 minutes. Meanwhile those at the north pole are erratic: increasing and decreasing in brightness, independent of the south pole.

This behaviour is distinct from Earth’s north and south auroras which broadly mirror each other in activity. Other similarly large planets, such as Saturn, do not produce any detectable X-ray aurora, which makes the findings at Jupiter particularly puzzling.

“We didn’t expect to see Jupiter’s X-ray hot spots pulsing independently as we thought their activity would be coordinated through the planet’s magnetic field. We need to study this further to develop ideas for how Jupiter produces its X-ray aurora and NASA’s Juno mission is really important for this,” explained lead author, William Dunn (UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UK and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, USA).

Since arriving at Jupiter in 2016, the Juno mission has been re-writing much of what is known about the giant planet, but the spacecraft does not have an X-ray instrument on board. To understand how the X-ray aurora are produced, the team hope to combine the X-ray aurora information gathered using XMM-Newton and Chandra with data collected by Juno as it explores the regions producing Jupiter’s aurora.

“If we can start to connect the X-ray signatures with the physical processes that produce them, then we can use those signatures to understand other bodies across the Universe such as brown dwarfs, exoplanets or maybe even neutron stars. It is a very powerful and important step towards understanding X-rays throughout the Universe and one that we only have while Juno is conducting measurements simultaneously with Chandra and XMM-Newton,” said William Dunn.

One of the theories that Juno may help to prove or disprove is that Jupiter’s auroras form separately when the planet’s magnetic field interacts with the solar wind. The team suspect that the magnetic field lines vibrate, producing waves that carry charged particles towards the poles and these change in speed and direction of travel until they collide with Jupiter’s atmosphere, generating X-ray pulses.

Using the XMM-Newton and Chandra X-ray observatories in May to June 2016 and March 2007, the authors produced maps of Jupiter’s X-ray emissions and identified an X-ray hot spot at each pole. Each hot spot covers an area much bigger than the surface of the earth. Studying each to identify patterns of behaviour, they found that the hot spots have very different characteristics.

“The behaviour of Jupiter’s X-ray hot spots raises important questions about what processes produce these auroras. We know that a combination of solar wind ions and ions of Oxygen and Sulphur, originally from volcanic explosions from Jupiter’s moon, Io, are involved. However, their relative importance in producing the X-ray emissions is unclear,” explained co-author Dr Licia Ray (Lancaster University).

“What I find particularly captivating in these observations, especially at the time when Juno is making measurements in situ, is the fact that we are able to see both of Jupiter's poles at once, a rare opportunity that last occurred ten years ago. Comparing the behaviours at the two poles allows us to learn much more of the complex magnetic interactions going on in the planet's environment,” concluded co-author Professor Graziella Branduardi-Raymont (UCL Space & Climate Physics).

The team hopes to keep tracking the activity of Jupiter’s poles over the next two years using X-ray observing campaigns in conjunction with Juno to see if this previously unreported behaviour is commonplace.

The UCL and Harvard-Smithsonian-led study also involved researchers from Lancaster University, University of Southampton, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Universite de Liege, Boston University, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, MIT and Universidad Pontificia Comillas. It was kindly funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), ESA, the Natural and Environmental Research Council (NERC) and UCL.

Quelle: University College London

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Update: 3.11.2017

Jovian Moon Shadow

Jupiter’s moon Amalthea casts a shadow on the gas giant planet in this image captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The elongated shape of the shadow is a result of both the location of the moon with relation to Jupiter in this image as well as the irregular shape of the moon itself.

The image was taken on Sept. 1, 2017 at 2:46 p.m. PDT (5:46 p.m. EDT), as Juno performed its eighth close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was 2,397 miles (3,858 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a latitude of 17.6 degrees.

Citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager.

Quelle: NASA

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Update: 10.11.2017

Jupiter’s Stunning Southern Hemisphere

See Jupiter’s southern hemisphere in beautiful detail in this new image taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The color-enhanced view captures one of the white ovals in the “String of Pearls,” one of eight massive rotating storms at 40 degrees south latitude on the gas giant planet.

The image was taken on Oct. 24, 2017 at 11:11 a.m. PDT (2:11 p.m. EDT), as Juno performed its ninth close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was 20,577 miles (33,115 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a latitude of minus 52.96 degrees. The spatial scale in this image is 13.86 miles/pixel (22.3 kilometers/pixel).

Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager.

Quelle: NASA

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Update: 1.12.2017

Jupiter Blues

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See Jovian clouds in striking shades of blue in this new view taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

The Juno spacecraft captured this image when the spacecraft was only 11,747 miles (18,906 kilometers) from the tops of Jupiter’s clouds — that’s roughly as far as the distance between New York City and Perth, Australia. The color-enhanced image, which captures a cloud system in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere, was taken on Oct. 24, 2017 at 10:24 a.m. PDT (1:24 p.m. EDT) when Juno was at a latitude of 57.57 degrees (nearly three-fifths of the way from Jupiter’s equator to its north pole) and performing its ninth close flyby of the gas giant planet.

The spatial scale in this image is 7.75 miles/pixel (12.5 kilometers/pixel).

Because of the Juno-Jupiter-Sun angle when the spacecraft captured this image, the higher-altitude clouds can be seen casting shadows on their surroundings. The behavior is most easily observable in the whitest regions in the image, but also in a few isolated spots in both the bottom and right areas of the image.

Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager.

Quelle: NASA

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Update: 14.12.2017

NASA’s Juno finds surprise radiation on Jupiter

Geophysical conference hears of new findings about the atmosphere and the roots of the Great Red Spot. Richard A Lovett reports.

So far, so good. NASA's Juno is holding up well against wear, tear and radiation.

DAVID MCNEW / GETTY IMAGES

Scientists using data from NASA’s Juno mission have found zones of unexpected radiation on Jupiter and have been able to peer deep into the planet’s Great Red Spot.

One of the newly discovered radiation zones lies at the equator, right above the top of the planet’s atmosphere. But it is not composed of the high-energy electrons that make up the bulk of Jupiter’s already identified radiation belts, Heidi Becker of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California said this week at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Instead, the newly discovered radiation zone is a separate belt of high-energy ions such as hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur.

The ions were found by Juno’s Jupiter Energetic Particle Detector Instrument (JEDI), which was built to monitor radiation as the probe dives beneath the planet’s belts every 53 days.

The find was a surprise, but Juno was designed for surprises, as its orbit carries it closer to Jupiter than any other spacecraft in history. “We are about 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometres) from the cloud tops at our closest approach,” says Becker.

Most likely, she says, these particles come from gas clouds near the icy moon of Europa and the sulfur-spewing volcanic moon of Io. They fall toward Jupiter, hit the atmosphere, and have their electrons stripped away, turning them into high-energy ions that then gather in the region where they were detected.

”So, this gap between the clouds and the radiation belt isn’t a gap after all,” she says.

The other discovery came near the inner edge of the main radiation belts, which Juno grazes at the planet’s higher latitudes on each orbital pass.

At the moment, all the scientists know is that the probe hit a belt of very energetic particles: even more energetic than those in the equatorial ion belt. What they are is isn’t clear because Juno’s instruments weren’t built to detect such things. Instead, the detections showed up when the radiation penetrated the shielding of the spacecraft’s star-tracker navigation instrument — the most heavily shielded device on the entire spacecraft.

The Juno team was anticipating that the star tracker would experience occasional light flashes from high-energy electrons that got through its shielding. Jupiter’s radiation belts were known to be very potent.

What the scientists didn’t expect was that among these electrons would be particles hundreds of times more powerful.

The hits must be from some sort of heavy ion, but beyond that it’s a grab bag of guesses. “The species, and where they might come from, is something we’re still studying,” Becker says.

Meanwhile, on a close approach last July the spacecraft passed above the Great Red Spot — a giant storm larger than the Earth that is circled by winds moving 120 metres per second. It has persisted at least since telescopes were good enough to observe it, about 150 years ago, and is one of Jupiter’s great mysteries.

One of Juno’s goals, says Andy Ingersoll of California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, was to use microwave sensors to peer beneath the cloud tops to determine how deep the Great Red Spot’s roots descend. To do this, it uses six different microwave frequencies, each able to measure temperatures at a different depth.

These sensors found a hot zone beneath the Great Red Spot that went to a depth of at least 350 kilometres, the deepest to which they could observe. “How deep it goes down beyond that is still to be determined,” Ingersoll says. He notes, however, that on future passes, Juno can peer even deeper via careful measurements of Jupiter’s gravity field. This, he says, will be affected by the density of the underlying gases, which in turn is affected by their temperature.

The source of the Great Red Spot’s heat is not fully understood, although knowing how far down its roots extend will help scientists refine their models. Ingersoll’s favorite theory is that the Spot has been observed to “swallow” smaller storms, each of which contains energy.

“It’s like a food chain,” he says. “A big fish eating little fish.”

Another option is that the spot might be getting energy from its sides, one of which is closer to the equator, better warmed by sunlight, and the other closer to the pole.

Meanwhile, the spacecraft is in good shape. It was designed to complete 32 orbits of Jupiter, then plunge into its atmosphere to avoid the risk of hitting one of Jupiter’s moons and contaminating it with Earth bacteria. Initially, these orbits were planned to take two weeks each, but an equipment problem caused NASA engineers to leave it in its current 53-day cycle, rather than risking an engine burn that might go wrong.

That slowed the science mission by a factor of about four but didn’t change much else, says Scott Bolton, the mission’s principal investigator. “All the science is enabled by the close passes,” he says, “so if you’re in a longer orbit, it’s pretty much the same.”

Meanwhile, he says, Juno is in excellent health. “We haven’t seen any signs of degradation due to the radiation, which was one of our big fears.”

Quelle: COSMOS

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Update: 20.12.2017

NASA's Juno Probes the Depths of Jupiter's Great Red Spot

This animation takes the viewer on a simulated flight into, and then out of, Jupiter’s upper atmosphere at the location of the Great Red Spot. It was created by combining an image from the JunoCam imager on NASA's Juno spacecraft with a computer-generated animation.

This graphic shows a new radiation zone Juno detected surrounding Jupiter, located just above the atmosphere near the equator. Also indicated are regions of high-energy, heavy ions Juno observed at high latitudes.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/JHUAPL

This figure gives a look down into Jupiter's Great Red Spot, using data from the microwave radiometer instrument onboard NASA's Juno spacecraft. Each of the instrument's six channels is sensitive to microwaves from different depths beneath the clouds

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI

This looping animation simulates the motion of clouds in Jupiter's Great Red Spot. The animation was made by applying a wind movement model to a mosaic of JunoCam images.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstadt/Justin Cowart

Data collected by NASA's Juno spacecraft during its first pass over Jupiter's Great Red Spot in July 2017 indicate that this iconic feature penetrates well below the clouds. Other revelations from the mission include that Jupiter has two previously uncharted radiation zones. The findings were announced Monday at the annual American Geophysical Union meeting in New Orleans.

"One of the most basic questions about Jupiter's Great Red Spot is: how deep are the roots?" said Scott Bolton, Juno's principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "Juno data indicate that the solar system's most famous storm is almost one-and-a-half Earths wide, and has roots that penetrate about 200 miles (300 kilometers) into the planet's atmosphere."

The science instrument responsible for this in-depth revelation was Juno's Microwave Radiometer (MWR). "Juno's Microwave Radiometer has the unique capability to peer deep below Jupiter's clouds," said Michael Janssen, Juno co-investigator from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "It is proving to be an excellent instrument to help us get to the bottom of what makes the Great Red Spot so great."

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a giant oval of crimson-colored clouds in Jupiter's southern hemisphere that race counterclockwise around the oval's perimeter with wind speeds greater than any storm on Earth. Measuring 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) in width as of April 3, 2017, the Great Red Spot is 1.3 times as wide as Earth.

"Juno found that the Great Red Spot's roots go 50 to 100 times deeper than Earth's oceans and are warmer at the base than they are at the top," said Andy Ingersoll, professor of planetary science at Caltech and a Juno co-investigator. "Winds are associated with differences in temperature, and the warmth of the spot's base explains the ferocious winds we see at the top of the atmosphere."

The future of the Great Red Spot is still very much up for debate. While the storm has been monitored since 1830, it has possibly existed for more than 350 years. In the 19th century, the Great Red Spot was well over two Earths wide. But in modern times, the Great Red Spot appears to be diminishing in size, as measured by Earth-based telescopes and spacecraft. At the time NASA's Voyagers 1 and 2 sped by Jupiter on their way to Saturn and beyond, in 1979, the Great Red Spot was twice Earth's diameter. Today, measurements by Earth-based telescopes indicate the oval that Juno flew over has diminished in width by one-third and height by one-eighth since Voyager times.

Juno also has detected a new radiation zone, just above the gas giant's atmosphere, near the equator. The zone includes energetic hydrogen, oxygen and sulfur ions moving at almost light speed.

"The closer you get to Jupiter, the weirder it gets," said Heidi Becker, Juno's radiation monitoring investigation lead at JPL. "We knew the radiation would probably surprise us, but we didn't think we'd find a new radiation zone that close to the planet. We only found it because Juno's unique orbit around Jupiter allows it to get really close to the cloud tops during science collection flybys, and we literally flew through it."

The new zone was identified by the Jupiter Energetic Particle Detector Instrument (JEDI) investigation. The particles are believed to be derived from energetic neutral atoms (fast-moving ions with no electric charge) created in the gas around the Jupiter moons Io and Europa. The neutral atoms then become ions as their electrons are stripped away by interaction with the upper atmosphere of Jupiter.

Juno also found signatures of a high-energy heavy ion population within the inner edges of Jupiter's relativistic electron radiation belt -- a region dominated by electrons moving close to the speed of light. The signatures are observed during Juno's high-latitude encounters with the electron belt, in regions never explored by prior spacecraft. The origin and exact species of these particles is not yet understood. Juno's Stellar Reference Unit (SRU-1) star camera detects the signatures of this population as extremely high noise signatures in images collected by the mission's radiation monitoring investigation.

To date, Juno has completed eight science passes over Jupiter. Juno's ninth science pass will be on Dec. 16.

Juno launched on Aug. 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and arrived in orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016. During its mission of exploration, Juno soars low over the planet's cloud tops -- as close as about 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers). During these flybys, Juno is probing beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and studying its auroras to learn more about the planet's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

JPL manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California.

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Jupiter’s Auroras Present a Powerful Mystery

This is a reconstructed view of Jupiter’s northern lights through the filters of the Juno Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph instrument on Dec. 11, 2016, as the Juno spacecraft approached Jupiter, passed over its poles, and plunged towards the equator.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Bertrand Bonfond

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Quelle: NASA

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Update: 6.01.2018

High Above Jupiter’s Clouds

NASA’s Juno spacecraft was a little more than one Earth diameter from Jupiter when it captured this mind-bending, color-enhanced view of the planet’s tumultuous atmosphere.

Jupiter completely fills the image, with only a hint of the terminator (where daylight fades to night) in the upper right corner, and no visible limb (the curved edge of the planet).

Juno took this image of colorful, turbulent clouds in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere on Dec. 16, 2017 at 9:43 a.m. PST (12:43 p.m. EST) from 8,292 miles (13,345 kilometers) above the tops of Jupiter’s clouds, at a latitude of 48.9 degrees.

The spatial scale in this image is 5.8 miles/pixel (9.3 kilometers/pixel).

Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager.

Quelle: NASA

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Update: 12.01.2018

Jupiter’s Colorful Cloud Belts

Colorful swirling cloud belts dominate Jupiter’s southern hemisphere in this image captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

Jupiter appears in this color-enhanced image as a tapestry of vibrant cloud bands and storms. The dark region in the far left is called the South Temperate Belt. Intersecting the belt is a ghost-like feature of slithering white clouds. This is the largest feature in Jupiter’s low latitudes that’s a cyclone (rotating with clockwise motion).

This image was taken on Dec. 16, 2017 at 10:12 PST (1:12 p.m. EST), as Juno performed its tenth close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 8,453 miles (13,604 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a latitude of 27.9 degrees south.

The spatial scale in this image is 5.6 miles/pixel (9.1 kilometers/pixel).

Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager.

Quelle: NASA

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Update: 16.01.2018

What in the World Is Metallic Hydrogen

Paul Sutter is an astrophysicist at The Ohio State University and the chief scientist at COSI science center. Sutter is also host of Ask a Spaceman and Space Radio, and leads AstroTours around the world. Sutter contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Solid. Liquid. Gas. The materials that surround us in our normal, everyday world are divided into three neat camps. Heat up a solid cube of water (aka ice), and when it reaches a certain temperature, it changes phases into a liquid. Keep cranking the heat, and eventually, you'll have a gas: water vapor.

Every element and molecule has its own "phase diagram," a map of what you should expect to encounter if you apply a specific temperature and pressureto it. The diagram is unique to each element because it depends on the precise atomic/molecular arrangement and how it interacts with itself under various conditions, so it's up to scientists to tease out these diagrams through arduous experimentation and careful theory

Below Jupiter's swirling cloud tops, the common element hydrogen exists in a very strange state.

Credit: Lella Erceg, Lycee Francais de Toronto/NASA/SwRI/MSSS-

When it comes to hydrogen, we usually don't encounter it at all, except when it's buddied up with oxygen to make the more familiar water. Even when we do get it by lonesome, its shyness prevents it from interacting with us alone — it pairs up as a diatomic molecule, almost always as a gas. If you trap some in a bottle and pull the temp down to 33 kelvins (minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 240 degrees Celsius), hydrogen becomes a liquid, and at 14 K (minus 434 degrees F or minus 259 degrees C), it becomes a solid.

You would think that on the opposite end of the temperature scale, a hot gas of hydrogen would stay … a hot gas. And that's true, as long as the pressure is kept low. But the combination of high temperature and high pressure leads to some interesting behaviors.

Jovian deep dives

On Earth, as we've seen, hydrogen's behavior is straightforward. But Jupiter isn’'t Earth, and the hydrogen found in abundance within and beneath the great bands and swirling storms of its atmosphere can be pushed beyond its normal limits.

Buried deep below the planet's visible surface, the pressures and temperature rise dramatically, and the gaseous hydrogen slowly gives way to a layer of supercritical gas-liquid hybrid. Due to these extreme conditions, the hydrogen can't settle into a recognizable state. It is too hot to stay a liquid but under too much pressure to float freely as a gas — it's a new state of matter.

Descend deeper, and it gets even stranger.

Even in its hybrid state in a thin layer just beneath the cloud tops, hydrogen is still bouncing around as a two-for-one diatomic molecule. But at sufficient pressures (say, a million times more intense than the Earth's air pressure at sea level), even those fraternal bonds aren't strong enough to resist the overwhelming compressions, and they snap.

The result, below roughly 8,000 miles (13,000 km) under the cloud tops, is a chaotic mix of free hydrogen nuclei — which are just single protons — intermingled with liberated electrons. The substance reverts to a liquid phase, but what makes hydrogen hydrogen is now completely disassociated into its component parts. When this happens at very high temperatures and low pressures, we call this a plasma — the same stuff as the bulk of the sun or a lightning bolt.

But in the depths of Jupiter, the pressures force the hydrogen to behave much differently than a plasma. Instead, it takes on properties more akin to those of a metal. Hence: liquid metallic hydrogen.

That's metal

Most of the elements on the periodic table are metals: They're hard and shiny, and make for good electrical conductors. The elements get those properties from the arrangement they make with themselves at normal temperatures and pressures: They link up to form a lattice, and each donates one or more electrons to the community pot. These dissociated electrons roam freely, hopping from atom to atom as they please.

If you take a bar of gold and melt it down, you still have all the electron-sharing benefits of a metal (except the hardness), so "liquid metal" isn't all that foreign a concept. And some elements that aren't normally metallic, like carbon, can take on those properties under certain arrangements or conditions.

So, at first blush, "metallic hydrogen" shouldn't be that strange an idea: It's just a nonmetallic element that starts behaving as a metal at high temperatures and pressures. [Lab-Made 'Metallic Hydrogen' Could Revolutionize Rocket Fuel]

Once a degenerate, always a degenerate

What's the big fuss?

The big fuss is that metallic hydrogen is not a typical metal. Garden variety metals have that special lattice of ions embedded in a sea of free-floating electrons. But a stripped-down hydrogen atom is just a single proton, and there's nothing a proton can do to build a lattice.

When you squeeze on a bar of metal, you're trying to force the interlocking ions closer together, which they absolutely hate. Electrostatic repulsion provides all the support a metal needs to be strong. But protons suspended in a fluid? That ought to be much easier to squish. How can the liquid metallic hydrogen inside Jupiter support the crushing weight of the atmosphere above it?

The answer is degeneracy pressure, a quantum mechanical quirk of matter under extreme conditions. Researchers thought conditions that extreme might be found only in exotic, ultradense environments like white dwarfs and neutron stars, but it turns out that we have an example right in our solar backyard. Even when electromagnetic forces are overwhelmed, identical particles like electrons can only be squeezed so tightly together — they refuse to share the same quantum mechanical state.

In other words, electrons will never share the same energy level, which means they will keep piling on top of each other, never getting closer, even if you squeeze really, really hard.

Another way to look at the situation is via the so-called Heisenberg uncertainty principle: If you try to pin down the position of an electron by pushing on it, its velocity can become very large, resulting in a pressure force that resists further squeezing.

So the interior of Jupiter is strange indeed — a soup of protons and electrons, heated to temperatures higher than that of the sun's surface, suffering pressures a million times stronger than those on Earth, and forced to reveal their true quantum natures.

Learn more by listening to the episode "What in the world is metallic hydrogen?" on the Ask A Spaceman podcast, available on iTunes and on the web at askaspaceman.com. Thanks to Tom S., @Upguntha, Andres C., and Colin E. for the questions that led to this piece! Ask your own question on Twitter using #AskASpaceman or by following Paul@PaulMattSutterfacebook.com/PaulMattSutter.

Quelle: SC

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Update: 30.01.2018

By Jove! Jupiter Storms Rage in New Juno Photo

Citizen scientist Björn Jónsson processed this photo of Jupiter using data gathered by the JunoCam imager aboard NASA's Juno spacecraft on Dec. 16, 2017.

Credit: Björn Jónsson/NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

Storms rage on Jupiter in a gorgeous new photo captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft.

Juno snapped the picture with its JunoCam imager on Dec. 16, 2017, during the probe's most recent close flyby of the gas giant. Juno is orbiting Jupiter on a highly elliptical path and makes one such close approach every 54.5 Earth days.

When Juno took the picture, the probe was about 5,460 miles (8,787 kilometers) above Jupiter's swirling cloud tops, NASA officials said. Though the orientation suggests the imaged region is in Jupiter's south, the photo actually depicts an area at about 38 degrees north latitude.

Quelle: SC

Raumfahrt - JUNO SPACECRAFT-Jupiter-Mission Update-11

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